Face that led police to warehouse killer

Detectives and experts reveal high-tech reconstruction helped them solve case

- BY MAGDALENE DALZIEL

FACIAL reconstruction experts helped nail the killer of a dad whose remains lay undiscovered in a disused warehouse for a year.

David Barnes, 33, murdered army veteran Ean Coutts, 60, at his home on Main Street in Kinglassie in September 2019.

He transported his victim's torched body in a wheelie bin to an industrial unit nearly five miles away in Glenrothes.

The brute then committed a series of frauds and thefts by using Ean's bank card to withdraw money from his account and apply for finance. Barnes even pretended to be Ean at a premises in Fife.

On September 27, 2020, one year after the murder, Ean's partially mummified body was discovered by an urban explorer at the Whitehill Industrial Estate in Fife.